The Semantic Sphere 1: Computation, Cognition and Information Economy

Chapter 3

Symbolic Cognition

Having discussed the general nature and structure of information, I would now like to return to the processes of symbolic encoding that provide the interface between the phenomenal world and the semantic world of human beings. I will therefore expand on and provide more detail and context for certain concepts discussed in the preceding chapter. The purpose of this chapter is to establish as clearly as possible the specificity of human cognition in relation to animal cognition, with respect to both the processes of individual cognition and the emergent processes of collective cognition. Rather than a systematic presentation, this chapter provides a spiraling series of meditations in which the same themes are re-examined in increasing detail from different perspectives.

Section 3.1 delimits the field of symbolic cognition. Section 3.2 defines the type of reflexivity specific to human cognition. Section 3.3 discusses the power of human symbolic cognition, in particular its capacity to generate cultural phenomena. Section 3.4 focuses on the impossibility of separating the phenomenal and conceptual dimensions of symbolic cognition. Then section 3.5 discusses the openness of symbolic cognition, its creativity and the unlimited diversity of its manifestations. Section 3.6 completes the chapter with an inventory of the differences between human and animal collective intelligence. This final section provides a transition to the next chapter (“Creative conversation”), ...